Happy Birthday to my baby!

My baby AM is 1 today!

I'm in deep hypnosis.

Smile! I'm 9 cm's here.

Yes, I have my baby! Total happiness. Look at all that hair!

Yep, another birthday to be celebrated. We have three Libra's in our family.

AM is our fourth and final child. Her birth story starts with her conception. I'll spare you the intimate details of our amazing night. lol! Afterwards Josh and I lay in bed, our bodies were literally vibrating. Something neither of us have ever experienced, it was very unique. He rolled over and said,"I wouldn't be surprised if ended up pregnant after tonight." We weren't really trying, but we weren't preventing it either. I didn't say anything to it, but I just knew that I was pregnant. I knew that this would be a very special pregnancy. It definitely was more spiritual by far.

AM came to me several times during my pregnancy to tell me of her mission here on earth, that she would be a healer. And she loved any kind of energy work I had done on me, it always got her moving. I also looked into a new birthing method called Hypnobabies. It is actual medical hypnosis for childbirth. LOVE IT!!!

Three weeks before AM's "guess date"(a term for those who are familiar with the Hypnobabies language), I was having a lot of birthing waves(another Hypnobabies term). I felt like it could be the day. We started getting the house ready and calling everyone that we had invited to attend the birth. The birthing waves kept coming. We called my amazing midwife, Suzanne. My doulas, Roz and Tisha. And a few other people. Suzanne checked me first thing and I was totally disappointed to find that I was only 3 cm's. The birthing waves were starting to die down. I sent everyone home and tried to nap, conserve my energy. About three hours later they picked up again with more intensity. We called everyone back. Still no progress as far as dialation was concerned. My funny midwife then gave me two options, that she could manually dialated my cervix(OUCH!) or tell everyone to go h0me again and try for more sleep. I decided for the latter option. When I was completely honest with myself, I felt like I had performance anxiety. Like they wanted me to birth my baby more than I wanted to. After four hours of what felt like transition, we sent everyone home and my birthing waves completely stopped at midnight.

For the next three weeks, nothing, nada, zero, zilch. No birthing waves AT ALL. No hints at all that birth was near.

Friday, October 13th was approaching(AM's guess date was Oct 15th). Being the superstitious mom that I am, I kept thinking that I didn't want a baby on Friday the 13th. Talk about the Law of Attraction, AM had decided to pick her own birthday. Sure enough my birthing time began promptly at midnight at the beginning of Friday the 13th.

I remember just getting into bed about 10 minutes prior to everything beginning. One birthing wave began with a lot of intensity. I was trying not to get my hopes up. After about five good birthing waves I began to go deep inside myself and let go. I felt my baby slip underneath my pubic bone with such ease. I was so amazed at how intune I was with my body. 20 minutes later my water broke. AM's head was so low that nothing came out, just a tiny trickle. I let Josh know that it was baby time, that was his cue to call our midwife and this time only our one favorite doula and friend, Tisha.

The time between Josh making the calls and me getting in the tub was a total whirlwind. I was deep in my hypnosis experiencing time distortion. I remember doing some cleaning. I felt in control the entire time. It was painless too, I was just enjoying the sensations and being in awe of what my body was doing.

My midwife, Suzanne, showed up and found me sitting on the toilet. I had a huge urge to have a bowel movement. With a smile on her face she told me to get my butt of the toilet so she could check me. Sure enough I was 8 cm's. I got off our bed and gave Josh a High Five, smiles and hurray's all around. I got into our tub and relaxed in the warm water. My doula showed up and took pictures. One moment I'll never forget is Josh, Tisha, and Suzanne just sitting in front of the tub in complete awe. It was so quiet, I felt like I had to talk or entertain them. Tisha later told me she was just amazed at how calm I was. A little bit before 5 a.m. I started getting huge urges to push. I instructed Josh or Tisha, I can't remember, to put in my "Pushing Baby Out" hypnosis script into the cd player. I pushed my 9lbs 1 oz baby girl into my arms. I was euphoric.

I had my baby in my arms and was just relaxing in the tub waiting to push out the afterbirth. It was so much fun inspecting her. She had a head FULL of hair and was so calm. I spent those precious minutes just gazing into her eyes. She was gorgeous! Once everything was complete, Josh was able to cut the cord once it stopped pulsating. I got out of the tub, walked over to our bed and just held her more. After about 30 minutes my midwife did all the newborn examinations and screening right there on our bed. I participated throught the whole thing and Suzanne was very respectful of AM, no harsh rubbing but gentle hands and soft voices. It was beautiful and peaceful and easy. My midwife left a few hours later, we dressed our new baby(she had no name for the first 2 days of her life, but we eventually found a fitting name for the day she was born on) and snuggled her in bed as we fell asleep.

A few hours later we woke up, got our kids up and introduced them to their new sister. JA was so mad at us, he really wanted to see her birth. I had done a lot of preparation with him for this birth, but in the end it was in the middle of the night, he was asleep and everything was already so peaceful that we didn't see the need to add more to it. So he scolded us and then asked me the next day for a baby brother. ROFLMBO! I told him that mommy needed some time to heal and that IF we had another baby I would definitely let him be at the birth. Um, that's a BIG IF!

AM is such a wonderful baby, we couldn't ask for anything more. I love her personality and how she has already sensed what her mission in life is. She has brought a great deal of healing to our family in so many ways. We love you AM!!!